"How you must care!--for I never saw you so dull," was her answer.
"Don't you see that it's not too late for me to help you?" And as he
continued to stare, she brought out sublimely: "Take the rest--in
imagination! Let it at least be of that much use to you. Tell her I
lied to her--she's too ready to believe it! And so, after all, in a
sense, I sha'n't have been wasted."
His stare hung on her, widening to a kind of wonder. She gave the
look back brightly, unblushingly, as though the expedient were too
simple to need oblique approaches. It was extraordinary how a few
words had swept them from an atmosphere of the most complex
dissimulations to this contact of naked souls.
It was not in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but
something in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light. He
went up to his friend and took her hand.
"You would do it--you would do it!"
She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook.
"Good-by," he said, kissing it.
"Good-by? You are going--?"
"To get my letter."
"Your letter? The letter won't matter, if you will only do what I
ask."
He returned her gaze. "I might, I suppose, without being out of
character. Only, don't you see that if your plan helped me it could
only harm her?"
"Harm _her?_"
"To sacrifice you wouldn't make me different. I shall go on being
what I have always been--sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do
you want my punishment to fall on _her?_"
She looked at him long and deeply.
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